SEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII. 291 



just what moisture the butter contained, simply because the methods ot 

 procedure in determining moisture were so complicated that outside of a 

 chemical laboratory is was not possible to give any accurate estimate as 

 to the full amount of moisture that butter .contained. One of the things 

 we have been working on is along that line, so you can, before removing 

 your butter from the churn, know what moisture it contains in the 

 churn, and can do it quickly, cheaply and without any more skill than you 

 now employ in the use of the Babcock test. We have been told by 

 buttermakers and merchants all over the country that something of that 

 kind would be of great assistance to the butter trade. 



Mr. Gray, chemist for the department, who has had a great deal of 

 experience in the manufacture of butter, and has had perhaps a wider 

 experience in controlling the moisture in butter than any of us, has been 

 working for several years along this line. The last four or five months 

 he stumbled onto a number of things that have simplified the problem a 

 great deal, and I believe he has made a test which any of you can use in 

 your work, or any commission man can use and know what the moisture 

 content of his butter is to. a certainty, just as close to the actual chem- 

 ical test as the Babcock test will give you the fat in your milk. The 

 apparatus you have to have is very simple; it will have to be made, 

 there is no glassware manufacturer making it today. The first requisite 

 is a pair of scales, and most of you have them in your creamery, and 

 they will be close enough for accurate work. With that scale comes a 

 nine and eighteen gram weight, but we have to have a ten gram 

 weight because bottles are easier read with ten gram samples, but you 

 can get a ten gram weight for a few cents. Order them from any supply 

 house. You need ordinary scales, a small alcohol lamp, which can be 

 bought from 25 to 50 cents; some little flasks like this for a few cents 

 apiece — they are found in every chemical laboratory in the land and 

 will be put out with the apparatus, undoubtedly — and then the part 

 which is new to the work is an instrument like this. 



Professor Webster then showed the apparatus and explained the 

 method by which the test was made. This will be fully explained 

 in a bulletin soon to be issued by the government. 



Altogether it does not take over twelve to fifteen minutes to make the 

 test, and that is within one-tenth of 1 per cent of what it would be if 

 you took the ordinary method of trying, which takes several hours to do, 

 and we believe in this little sample test that you have something that 

 will help you make a uniform quality of butter, such as you have not 

 been able to do. You know how hard it is to regulate the moisture con- 

 tent. When you know exactly where you are there will be a lot of other 

 things you will begin to study, that is, temperature at which you churn, 

 temperature of your wash water, number of revolutions you give your 

 churn, and a lot of those things you will find will influence the water in 

 your butter. If we can place in your hands something like this that you 

 can measure what you are doing, you will quickly learn there is a method 

 in making butter that must be adhered to as rigidly as any other line of 

 manufacture. It is not guesswork, and what is true today is true tomor- 



